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Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Responding to Negative Reviews

In today's climate of social media, you can find a review for just about anything under the sun, and that also include's someone's experience with a vacation rental at the Lake of the Ozarks. How you respond to a negative review, as an owner or manager, can make all the difference in how the vacationing public views you and/or your company.

Composing Your Response

Responding to a negative review in a negative manner, trying to make excuses or blaming others, probably won't gain you main more rentals. Potential customers will get a negative perception and people don't want to do business with someone that has a negative attitude, especially toward their guests! As much as you want to react in that manner, DON'T DO IT!

So how do you respond to those bad reviews? Well, you can just ignore it and hope that it goes away (it won't). You can respond in a negative manner (probably not the best idea). You can answer by blaming the guest, the housekeeper or someone on your staff (also probably not a good idea). Or you can give an honest answer and just state the facts if there was something in the review that just wasn't true. Just be sure to do so in a manner that doesn't cast you in a negative light.

Our Negative Review Experience

Recently, we had a guest that wasn't happy with the cleaning at one of our homes. The first thing the next morning, we sent over someone to take care of the few items that had been missed. The unhappy guest sent the cleaner away without allowing them to clean because they were eating breakfast. So I called the guest and left them a message asking when the best time would be to take care of the cleaning issues. The guest never called back.

In the review they left online, they mentioned the cleaning issues and the fact that we sent someone over, but not that they sent them away. However, they continued to complain about the cleaning. In my response, I thanked them for their review and then politely stated the facts; that we sent someone over to clean, but that they sent them away. That I had left a message, but they never responded. I also mentioned that we do make errors, but that we have a full staff available 24/7 to respond to and take care of any problems they may encounter. Even though i already thought we had tried to do the right thing, I apologized and invited them back to give us another chance with a discount on their next stay.

When other potential guests read the review, they will see that we responded, that we don't treat our guests in a negative manner, and that if they do encounter a problem, that someone will respond. They will also see that we acknowledge our mistakes and don't just make excuses. The famous quote goes, "There's no such thing as bad publicity," however, your response to the bad publicity (review) can be bad or hopefully, good!